Since the announcement of the discovery of C.sub.60, buckminsterfullerene, in 1985 ("C.sub.60 : Buckminsterfullerene," H. W. Kroto, J. R. Heath. S. C. O'Brien, R. F. Curl, and R. E. Smalley, Nature, Vol. 318, 1985, pp 162-163) and the announcement of the discovery of a method of producing macroscopic quantities of C.sub.60 in 1990 ("Solid C.sub.60 : A New Form of Carbon," W. Kratschmer, Lowell D. Lamb, K. Fostiropoulos, and Daniel R. Huffinan, Nature, Vol. 347, 1990, pp 354-358), a substantial amount of research has been conducted on this recently recognized form of carbon, specifically to finding a polar solvent that has a high boiling point, low toxicity, a high dielectric constant, high thermal and electrochemical stability, low viscosity and freezing point, and is relatively inexpensive in which C.sub.60 is highly soluble. In the above cited paper, Kratschmer, et al., reported that buckminsterfullerene is soluble in benzene, giving a "wine red to brown liquid" (pg. 354). The solubility of C.sub.60 in benzene was exploited by authors for the extraction of C.sub.60 from condensed soot produced in the electric arc between carbon rods and for the deposition of the pure material from benzene solutions. However, benzene does not meet the profile of a desired solvent due to it being non-polar and a suspected carcinogen.
In 1993, Ruoff, et al., reported on the solubility of C.sub.60 in a wide variety of solvents ("Solubility of C.sub.60 in a Variety of Solvents," R. S. Ruoff, Doris S. Tac, R. Malhotra, and D. C. Lorents, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 97, No. 13, 1993, 3319-3323). These authors report that C.sub.60 is soluble (up to approximately 50 mg/ml) in benzene and naphthalene derivatives, sparingly soluble in substituted alkanes (up to approximately 1 mg/ml), and insoluble in polar solvents (less than 0.003 mg/ml). These authors concluded that, while solubility trends are predictable for various classes of solvents, solubility in any particular solvent must be individually tested. This conclusion was supported by the exceptionally high solubility (0.89 mg/ml) of C.sub.60 in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NWP) considering the authors statement regarding the insolubility of C.sub.60 in polar solvents and the high polarity of NMP (dielectric constant=32.2). The preparation (i.e., solvent extraction of C.sub.60 from condensed carbon-arc soot) and use (i.e., electrochemical applications) of C.sub.60 are inhibited to some degree by the very low solubility of C.sub.60 in low-toxicity solvents. The solvents in which C.sub.60 are most soluble, the chlorinated aromatics (benzene, naphthalene, etc.) are suspected carcinogens. Although, the electrochemistry of C.sub.60 has been determined through the preparation of polar solvent-soluble derivatives or through the use of mixed solvents/supporting electrolytes such as those described by Muller and Heinze ("Direct Electrochemical Detection of C.sub.60 in Solution by Steady-State Voltammetry at Microelectrodes," R. Muller and J. Heinze, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Vol. 145, No. 4, 1998, pp 1227-1232), the potential electrochemical applications broadly expand if a single polar solvent is found. None of the preceding documents disclose a polar solvent that meets the aforementioned criteria. In fact, one of the above documents teaches that a polar solvent generally will not have a high solubility for C.sub.60 regardless of the solvent's other properties.